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Volvo 240 turns 40

1 of 11The 244 with this fascia was only available for a couple years in the U.S.

Photo by Jay Ramey

2 of 11The 242 was only available in he early 1980s.

Photo by Jay Ramey

3 of 11The 245 proved to be a very popular model for Volvo well into the 1980s, with 740 and 940 estate sales barely making a dent.

Photo by Jay Ramey

4 of 11The 240 continued to sell well until the very last year of production.

Photo by Jay Ramey

5 of 11The 244 proved to be a great seller despite the fact that the 200 series was essentially a facelifted 100 series that debuted in 1966.

Photo by Jay Ramey

6 of 11The 242GT was the sportiest offering of the range, though it wasn't sold for long.

Photo by Jay Ramey

7 of 11The 200 series soldiered on till 1993, with the Classic trim marking the end of production.

Photo by Jay Ramey

8 of 11The 262C by Bertone was only available for a short period of time.

Photo by Jay Ramey

9 of 11The 264 had the PRV V6 engine.

Photo by Jay Ramey

10 of 11The 264TE was a personal luxury sedan offering seating for seven.

Photo by Bertone

11 of 11The luxurious 264TE was not sold in North America.

Photo by Bertone

Icon of Swedish automotive industry keeps rolling

The Volvo 240 celebrated its 40th birthday last week, after an impressive 19 years in production that saw other Volvo models come and go. The 240 and its variants are still very much a part of the American automotive landscape -- impressive for a manufacturer whose share of the market is currently below 1 percent -- and the model continues to find new fans. And on the model's 40th birthday, we're going to take a look back at what makes the 240 a classic.

For a model now seen as revolutionary in terms of passive safety features, the 240 series was actually a modest refresh of the 140 series which had been in production since 1966. The 200 series debuted in August of 1974 and featured a number of technologies that had been previewed in the Volvo VSC ESV concept in 1972 like crumple zones, a steering wheel designed to withdraw into the dash in the case of an accident, antilock brakes, and architecture designed to offer rollover protection. The 200 series cars also featured rack-and-pinion steering and a MacPherson-type front suspension, both fairly progressive bits of engineeing for the time in a family car. In terms of safety tech the 240 also offered three-point seat belts which were first introduced in Volvo cars all the way back in 1959, but had yet to be widely adopted by other manufacturers. A total of three bodystyles were available at launch in 1974: the 242 coupe, 244 sedan, and the 245 station wagon, with the last number, of course, denoting the number of doors.

The 200-series cars were at first offered with Volvo's reworked four-cylinder engines, one of which was carried over from the 140 series. The new base engine was a 2127cc cast iron block inline-four producing 97 hp in carburetted form, and 123 hp in the fuel-injected version that was served up in the higher-spec models. The first couple years of production saw the use of single round headlights with the U.S. market receiving a slightly different version than one available elsewhere when it came to lights and sidemarkers.

The 244 with this fascia was only available for a couple years in the U.S. Photo by Jay Ramey

If you thought that the Volvo 100 and 200 series cars were all that was out there in the 1970s from this Swedish automaker, you probably haven't seen the car that we are going to take a ride in today. ...

Aside from the inline-four engine, the 200-series also debuted the Peugeot-Renault-Volvo V6 engine, which was offered in the top-spec 264 sedan and 265 wagon. The PRV V6 came paired with a choice of a three-speed automatic and a four-speed manual transmission, and produced a respectable 140 hp. Its fuel-injected version would appear in most markets in 1976, and for the 1980 model year the displacement was increased to 2.8 liters. Volvo also offered diesel engines in the 200 series coupled with turbocharging, with inline-six and inline-five engines sourced from Volkswagen.

The 240 series is known for a couple of rare variants, notably the 242GT and the 262C. The former was a sporty version of the two-door 242 which was also available in standard form, and was only offered on the 1978 through 1980 models years. The 242GT offered a high-compression engine and a racing suspension. U.S. versions of the 242GT were available only in a silver metallic exterior color and red pin stripes in addition to a few other stylistic accents. Many 242GTs were also adorned with optional mild racing equipment which was available though Volvo dealers. The other rare coupe, the 262C, was developed in conjuction with Bertone and was available from 1978-1981. This was a heavier restyling of the 242 which included a lower roofline and shorter raked windshield, in addition to a vinyl-topped roof. The 262C was meant to be a personal luxury coupe in the American sense of the concept, though its fair to say that that concept this didn't translate all that well into a two-door Volvo.

The 245 proved to be a very popular model for Volvo well into the 1980s, with 740 and 940 estate sales barely making a dent. Photo by Jay Ramey

Continuously variable transmissions seem like a relatively recent technology, but the roots of most CVTs on the market today originate from a small Dutch automaker that first put this transmission ...

Other markets also saw a couple of rare 200 series variants, including the 245 T, which was essentially a longer station wagon. The 245 T had longer side rear doors and an enlarged cargo compartment to accommodate a third row of seats. Airports and schools were the market for this model, with the latter using it as a school bus in rural areas of Sweden. Another rare model was the 264 TE by Bertone, which was a limousine with longer rear passenger doors and a reworked rear section with a longer third window after C-pillar. These were favored by the East German government as ministerial limos, which is where most of the production went. As with the 245 T, most 264 TEs have stayed in Europe and have only made sporadic appearances at classic Volvo meets.

The debut of the 700 and 900 series sedans and wagons, as well as the 400 series in other markets, did not temper buyers' appetites for the 200 series cars. The 200 series went on to receive several facelifts, though most of its mechanicals remained as released in the late 1970s. The nomenclature also changed during this period in time, with the digits in the index being replaced with the universal 240 towards the latter half of the production run. Cars from the very last year of production, 1993, received Classic badging and are distinguishable from other 240s by a body color-framed grille.

The 242GT was the sportiest offering of the range, though it wasn't sold for long. Photo by Jay Ramey

Last week the Volvo Club of America held its annual meet in the ski resort of Stratton Mountain, Vt., and we dropped by to take a look. More than one hundred cars made their way to this locale, right ...

By the end of the production run, 2,862,573 examples of the 200 series would end up rolling off the assembly line, with production having taken place in Sweden, Belgium, Australia, Italy, Malaysia, and even in Halifax, Canada in knock-down kit form.

The 200-series retains the distinction of having one of the longest production runs of any European sedan of the last half of the 20th century, and it very much remains a part of our automotive landscape in North America. While 240 values bottomed out a long time ago, they remain a bit pricier than they have any right to be. Impressive for a car that entered production in 1974 and stayed in production until 1993. The best examples haven't gone into collections either (unless we're talking about the are variants of the 200-series) so low mileage examples can still be readily found with just a bit of looking. And it's not unusual to see very clean examples sporting 200,000-mile or 300,000-mile badges on the grilles. By the time the 200-series hits the half-century mark, there will still be plenty of daily driven examples on our roads. And that'll be something no other car can claim.